Burn this City by Aleksandr Voinov

22

Humiliation. Sal was happy to give it to people who craved it. He sometimes did it to others to make a point, but he didn’t sleep with those people.

But Jack Barsanti had moved onto a kind of twilight edge, somehow. This wasn’t purely business anymore, but also not personal. Barsanti wasn’t one of those tech millionaires in their thirties or forties that Port Francis was good at producing and which, whether married or not, formed part of Sal’s sexual diet.

Fuck, drowning somebody wasn’t keeping their dignity intact, either, yet Barsanti somehow clung to at least erotic self-determination. Hands tied, physically restrained and controlled, and this was the hill he chose to die on? Yes. In a matter of speaking.

Sal was so tempted to brush that resistance aside, because while Barsanti’s head battled him, his body didn’t. He wouldn’t put up a real fight, and maybe Barsanti would play ball better if teased and turned on enough. Sal was patient like a rock when it mattered, and if the reward was big enough—he could tease and edge Barsanti all night and only fuck him when the man was begging him for it. And how much fun that would be, if only it were possible.

There was something very compelling about making a guy like Barsanti come apart like that, and it would undoubtedly be hotter than hearing him beg to protect somebody else.

If Sal had been younger, brasher, he’d have continued. Before Catia taught him that self-control was even more important than controlling the other. And Barsanti was in the twilight space where some of those rules should apply. If Sal wanted to look at himself in the mirror later, anyway.

Meeting Barsanti’s eyes, he kept his hands where they were. If Barsanti told Sal what he needed to know, Andrea would either have him executed the moment it was discovered, or there would be such a large price put on his head that Barsanti would have to run to the ends of the earth. Even if nobody caught up with him, he’d be a hunted man for the rest of his life. Killing him here, after extracting the information, could be considered a kindness. He’d never killed anyone he’d fucked before. He wondered if he could.

“To answer your question, Jack, and because I’m in a nice mood, yes, I sometimes tie up my lovers. What about you? Any fuzzy handcuffs in your life?”

Barsanti looked more bewildered than ashamed. “No.”

How a man who looked like Barsanti seemingly had such a narrow range of experience mystified Sal. How could every single past lover have failed to dress that defined physique in chains or restraints? With that skin tone and the light eyes, he’d look stunning in electric blue or maybe bottle green ropes. Wine red was out—that was Catia’s color.

“Sal?”

Sal turned his head and saw Enzo standing in the door. Not admonishing, not scandalized or in the least disturbed. “What’s up?”

“Just checking in.”

Yeah, as much fun as this had been, he needed to focus. After his nap, Barsanti seemed to have recovered some of his sass, but Sal was no closer to getting the answers he needed. “I’ll join you guys in a few minutes.”

He waited for Enzo to withdraw, then ran his hand back up to Barsanti’s sternum. “Let’s say I’m going to forget that Beth exists, what’s it worth to you?”

Barsanti’s eyes closed, and tension returned to his body. “How can I trust you?”

“Is trust a luxury you can afford right now? Besides, as I said, I talked to her. She’s nice and her death could lead to complications. Not enough reason to take her off the table as leverage, but I’m not going out of my way to machinegun puppies.”

“Six eight … two three.” Barsanti opened his eyes. “That’s the phone.”

“And the laptop?”

Jack nodded. “Capital … T, small p, number two, small p, small i, small h, underscore.” There. That was it. The crack and the leverage to widen it enough that he could slip into Barsanti’s resistance.

“Repeat that.”

“It’s the first letters of a sentence. Christ.”

“What’s the sentence?”

“‘The path to paradise begins in hell’. ‘To’ replaced by the number.”

Sal chuckled, immensely pleased that he had something to work with and it made him feel a lot more generous. “Aren’t you a deep guy.”

“It’s Dante’s Inferno.” Delivered in a tone as if he didn’t expect Sal to be a big reader or know who Dante Alighieri had been.

“As a password, it’s not too bad, but it’s too short.” Sal squeezed Barsanti’s shoulder. “All right, that’s sweet little Beth saved. Good job. But next I’ll have questions about your organization. Andrea. The capos. The soldiers. I’ll need to know everything.”

And again, Barsanti shut down, but not before Sal noticed the despair and loathing flashing across his features. At this point, Barsanti had more reasons to spill the rest than withhold it, but it seemed his pride was rearing its head again. With anybody else, Sal would have applied pressure, administered another beating, or gone back on his word and brought Beth back into play, but some part of him wanted to make this last part as easy on Barsanti as possible under the circumstances. Maybe it was the attraction, maybe it was respect.

Sal dismounted from both man and bed. He tied Barsanti again, then left the master bedroom. He briefly wondered what Enzo had made of Barsanti’s state of arousal—he’d likely noticed. Maybe he’d thought Sal was playing his usual games with the enemy. Enzo was intimately aware that arousal and power were both very complicated indeed.

The doc sat in the living room jabbing and poking at his phone as blips and music came from the tiny speaker. Enzo stood near the window, staring out into the darkness.

“Hey, doc. I need to ask him some more questions. He seems to be breathing okay, but maybe you have something more elegant to get him to talk?”

The doc put the phone down and straightened. “How clear does he need to be?”

“Pretty clear. He needs to remember things.” Sal shrugged.

In his experience, some men were physically strong, some intellectually, others emotionally. Or spiritually, whatever one wanted to call it. Barsanti was physically strong, and clearly intellectually too. Spiritually—he had no truck with that. If Barsanti had any issues with God or the saints about what he’d done in his life, Sal had no idea how to exploit them. He’d end up in the same circle of hell, no doubt. Emotionally—Barsanti had shown cracks. Sal could have made good on his threats, but Barsanti already feared him, hated him most likely. And maybe that bothered Sal a little, and not just because Barsanti was hot. In a different life, he could easily imagine caring about how Barsanti regarded him—caring about whether he respected him too.

The doc nodded. “Yeah, I got something. What do you reckon he weighs?”

“A hundred-seventy-ish. Ten to fifteen percent body fat, I’d say.”

“That tallies with what I thought.” The doc dove down to dig around in his bag and straightened with a small black case in hand. Sal had seen similar ones in the hands of diabetics, but when the doc unzipped it, it held a couple syringes and two small medical vials. “Can you immobilize an arm for me?”

“No problem.” He motioned Enzo to come along, and together, they returned to the master bedroom, where Barsanti lay exactly as Sal had left him.

Barsanti seemed oddly complacent, considering he had to know what it all meant. And now that his mind had gone there, those zip cuffs struck Sal as crude and painful. He could easily have tied up Barsanti much more elegantly, without so much as reddening his skin. Though Barsanti wouldn’t appreciate the offer to use braided rope instead of that sharp-edged plastic.

“Gonna help you out, Barsanti.”

Barsanti tensed up and gritted his teeth. “‘Help me out’.”

Sal grinned back and freed Barsanti’s left arm, pushing the shirt sleeve up before pressing his arm flat against the mattress.

The doc walked in, drawing a syringe from one of the vials. He checked the amount of liquid in the syringe, then tapped the needle and knelt on the floor next to the bed. Deft fingers traced and found a vein, rubbed a piece of gauze along the skin, then gently and precisely pierced it with the needle. He hesitated. “I should ask about allergies to painkillers …” and then he grinned.

Barsanti snorted and it could almost have been laughter.

“I guess he’s fine.” The doc emptied the syringe into Barsanti’s arm, then pulled the needle out. He stashed everything in a small black case he pulled from a trouser pocket. There was a spark in his eyes. “That’s my type of ‘recreational’, you’ll see.”

Sal ran his hands along Barsanti’s arm and then released it. “What is it?”

“House mix.” The doc tilted his head and looked at Barsanti, who made an odd sound, a kind of release of breath, but not quite sigh, not quite a groan. “Intravenously, it’s instant. Also kicks like a mule with a grudge.” The doc seemed genuinely delighted.

Sal chuckled and freed Jack’s other hand. “You freak.” With fascination, he watched Barsanti’s shoulders relax and sink into the mattress as tension drained away. He was so tempted to run his hands over Barsanti’s chest and the rest of his body. Some men didn’t even flinch when you damn near chewed their nipples off, but Barsanti was sensitive there. A touch had been enough to get his attention. “You said it’s instant.”

“Yep. Look.” The doc waved toward Barsanti.

Jack Barsanti’s breathing was deeper and easier, shoulders and arms relaxed, knees opening a little, though shudders passed through him, and one of his feet twitched restlessly. Damn, that change was something to behold. His eyes were open, but his lids seemed heavy, and his gaze was turned inward.

“Shit. That’s a nasty fucking mule.”

“Trust me, he’s having fun.” The doc zipped the case.

Enzo cleared his throat. “Might be a good way to kill him if you don’t want to use a bullet. Make it look like an OD. Lo Cascio would freak if his consigliere turned out to have been a junkie.”

“And it’s strong enough that people get the dose wrong all the time,” the doc agreed.

Sal looked at Barsanti, twitches in his face betraying something, though Sal had no idea what. Was he fighting for clarity? To speak? Or responding to two guys plotting his murder out loud?

Sal rolled his shoulders and sat down on the side of the bed. “Do you hear me, Jack? I need names, addresses, and passwords.”

He needed to know everything Barsanti knew about every single member of the Lo Cascio … where they lived, who they fucked, what cars they drove. And where Andrea was hiding his money, everything about his bank accounts, his shell companies. Everything. And he would get it.